Sacred Time Read Free Page B

that they looked more like sisters than Riptide and Great-Aunt Camilla. Together, they’d do smooth and fast laps at the far side of the pool so that our splashing wouldn’t frizz their curls.
    I’d try to prolong our swim because I dreaded the men’s locker room, where roaches and silverfish scurried when you turned on the light. According to Mrs. Feinstein, silverfish ate anything, even the glue in book bindings; and she’d point out dead silverfish in the light of her elevator when we took it up to the apartment for lunch.

    The brim of my father’s hat filled the rearview mirror. “At least instruct me how I am depriving my own and getting my feet wet at the same time, Leonora. Have you and the boy ever gone hungry? Without coats? Without crossword puzzles, God forbid?”
    â€œWithout the damn car heater.”
    I tugged the brim of my hat forward, then back. Forward again. Still, its rustling against my ears was not enough to smother my parents quarrel. They often fought about money. About not being poor. About not looking poor. Which meant keeping things clean and mended, saving scraps of leftovers for another day.
    â€œI said I’ll get the heater fixed.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œWhen, she wants to know.”
    â€œDon’t talk about me in the third person.”
    â€œSorry.”
    I wound a piece of wilted lettuce around a button of my wool coat. We always had a few lettuce leaves or shriveled string beans on the seats, since my father used the Studebaker to transport crates with carrots and beets and lettuce and beans from the Bronx Terminal Market to Festa Liguria on East Tremont Avenue.
    â€œPeople can get frostbite in this car.” When my mother raised her thin shoulders, her back seemed half the width of my father’s.
    â€œI’ll get the heater fixed once those chiropractors pay me for their convention.”
    â€œI rest my case.”
    â€œA lawyer in the family. All our troubles are over now.”
    â€œI promise not to use much of the wax,” I said.
    Why did the grown-ups always get to decide what was bought? Why should a car heater be more important than a stencil kit? Or a frying pan when the old one wasn’t broken? I folded my hands and prayed to St. Anthony, my namesake saint, to let me live with the television girl and her parents. They never argued. I pictured the glass-wax girl, the glass-wax mother on the screen, shown from outside their window as they decorate it while someone high up in a tree—maybe an angel—is pointing a camera at them. In their living room is a fireplace, ready for Santa to arrive.
    â€œWe don’t even have a fireplace,” I said.
    â€œSanta knows the route down our fire escape.” My mother drummed the tip of her silver crossword pencil against her front teeth. “Light. Seven letters. A word for light…”
    â€œI don’t enjoy fighting with you,” my father said.
    â€œNow you want to fight and enjoy it, too?”
    He let out an exasperated laugh.
    I pulled off my itchy wool mittens and let them dangle from my sleeves on the cord Riptide Grandma had crocheted between them. The last time I’d heard my father laugh like that was when my mother had wanted to yank me out of Catholic school. She said it was bad practice to mix religion and school. But my father and grandparents said the nuns gave a better education, and I wanted to stay at St. Simon Stock because Kevin and my other friends were there.
    Though I was sure I’d filled Frogman’s leg with baking soda, I popped the metal cap off his leg. Some days, being sure only meant you had to double-check, because if you didn’t, everything else would come undone. And I wanted to show my cousins how Frogman swam up and down when baking soda bubbled into water.
    â€œSeven letters. Glow…too short.” My mother reached up to fluff the speckled feathers on her red hat.
    â€œAre you quite